So Alienware says your battery is only covered for the first year..

so alienware says that the batteries on all alienware systems is only covered for the first year and then excluded from the warranty if over a year has passed..

is this true? because if so thats utter crap..

keyboard..W key quit working have to press it really hard and im lucky if it works.. so i call in he has me run the pretest and i see my battery health is at 34% while at 100% charge so i ask
about it and im told that batteries on all alienware systems are only covered for the first year and im more than welcome to buy a new one..

 

Batteries are considered a consumable item. They are normal to be excluded in the warranty for most things.

 

lol at the post above me..

heres the deal on such an expensive computer batteries better be covered for the entire warranty.. because its never said that they are not..

 

Here is some clips from random warrenty papers.

Warranty Period for all Lenovo batteries, stylus, and digitizer pens are limited to 12 months unless otherwise specified. This means that Lenovo will provide warranty service without charge for batteries, stylus, and digitizer pens during the 12 months of the warranty period.

Dell's standard battery warranty is one year. Batteries are a consumable item. All batteries degrade with time and use. The warranty is very similar to common auto warranties which exclude consumable items such as tires.

Streamlight warrants its products to be free of defects for a lifetime of use except for batteries and bulbs, abuse and normal wear


All I did was google (insert manufacture name here) Battery warrenty. You will be surprised what's excluded as wear items for products.

 

ok look... hen you buy said machine and buy a warranty to cover the whole of said machine then the battery needs to be covered for the life of the warranty.. or it needs to be stated that it is not and that is not the case.. they do not go hey buy the way the battery is only covered for the first year.. and especially on a 3-7k system..

I understand that common practice may be that they do not cover certain items but it is usually implied at purchase what is covered and what is not covered.

 

It is included in Dell's warrenty. I cut and pasted it above.

 

Batteries are like gas for a new car. The car is covered but the gas gets used up. If they did warranty it how would it work? No wear for the life of a 4 year warranty, or a 20 percent cap ect? Problem is wear comes down to how it's treated.. how much it's used, what temps it's stored and used in... too many variables

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Not if you call the alien\/\/arenumber orry my \/\/ key ent out

 

Actually I think batteries like these in our laptops might be covered longer. Just like most automotive batteries have a pretty long warranty. Yes, I agree they are consumable, and there are tons of variables that affect the life span of the battery. However, the battery's warranty maybe tied to the systems warranty. Take Dell's standard monitor warranty, default the warranty is one year. However, if you bought that monitor with a computer, and got an extended warranty then by Dell's warranty clauses state that monitor's warranty is the same as the length of the computers. Apple does something similar with their Macbook warranties. If you by Apple care for three years and your Macbook's battery goes out in two years, they replace it. It is important that these batteries have an average expected lifespan based on normal usage, and that life span is typically longer than the life of the laptop itself. This also holds true for rechanrable AA batteries, Auto batteries and the like.

 

well according to the alienwarehot line number lol they are not covered past the fist year no matter what.. all im saying thats the first ive heard about it..

 

No, it has always been this way. If the battery has a material defect and get's shorted out and melts or something crazy like that I have seen exceptions, but never for wear. No longer holding a charge is considered wear. Wear and tear is never covered under any kind of warranty or insurance coverage. It doesn't matter how expensive the part or the machine is, wear is not a defect. My battery is two years old and has 80% left according to the monitoring apps. It still goes more than 4 hours on a full charge when using IGFX and AlienFX is turned off. The more you run the laptop from the battery and the more charge cycles it goes through, the shorter the life span is and the faster it wears out. Leaving the system plugged in and fully charged makes the batteries last many years.

 

Mine is about 2 years old and has 9 percent wear. I have even have a spare battery in my backpack that is never used, just in case. I haven't seen the west on it though from time.

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Batteries lose capacity every single year.
Its a consumable hardware unlike a CPU or GPU that doesnt have any wear.

The wear vary from how much you use the battery. Not just strain but also how low you empty the battery before charging it up again. A battery have a certain cycles (say 500 cycles to 40%), if you go lower you have less cycles before the battery says bye bye.

Warranty for batteries are a lot more tricky than for other hardware. Especially these small batteries you find on notebooks.

 

What are people using to monitor their batteries? I loaded BatteryBar, but my Full Runtime seems to be stuck at "Calculating..."

My Battery Wear is also at 0.0% of 87.320mWh which is probably wrong.

 

I don't usually even bother monitoring the battery. I figure it will last until it dies and there is nothing I can do to change it since I am using my system in a manner conducive to good results.

HWiNFO64 will monitor the battery 24/7 if you choose to leave that sensor enabled. Using the ePSA test at boot (F12 > Diagnostics) is probably the most accurate measurement.

 

I use HWMonitor to keep an eye on everything important, including the battery. It's a great, light program to use.

The battery not being covered under warranty after a year is not surprising to me. It's a little disappointing, but not surprising.

 

As the others have said, batteries degrade with use. If a piece of hardware (e.g. CPU, GPU) has been made properly, it can be expected to last a long time, even with those of us that hammer it regularly. Hardware failures do happen but they don't approach 100% over time. On the other hand, batteries are guaranteed to degrade and eventually become unusable with use, so it's entirely reasonable for them to not be covered on the warranty unless the reason they're going wrong is a manufacturing defect and not normal wear and tear.

Automotive batteries typically aren't lithium-based. They use entirely different battery technology for different applications. A typical automotive battery that holds the same charge as our laptop's batteries will need to be far larger and heavier to do so. Those batteries are also designed to deliver hundreds of amps to the starter motors in cars without overheating, catching fire, or exploding, which a laptop battery most certainly isn't capable of. So...that's not a valid comparison.

 

Best advice on how to keep the battery usable is when you shut your computer down for the night (if you do) is to then unplug it . . . I've done that for 3 years now and my battery is showing a 22% wear level on HWMonitor. I can probably count the amount of times I've had it just on battery on 1 hand . . . and if I did that it was just to discharge the battery probably.

That's the question that I asked here 3 years ago after having to replace my battery on my previous laptop and it's been very sound advice imo from the results that I've seen.


Farson

 

Also pretty standard practice under warranty is to not cover adapters. Yes, I realize you cannot use the computer without the adapter, but you did not purchase a warranty for your power adapter.

 

I'm showing a wear level of 6% after 2 years. It's been on battery for a significant length of time maybe a dozen or two times. Other than that, the battery has still been left connected the whole time with the system being plugged in overnight, and I've never discharged it for the sake of maintaining battery health. I really don't think unplugging the power with the laptop powered down makes any difference. It might have used to, but modern day battery charging circuitry is luckily a bit more intelligent than it used to be.

 

This is true across all brands, most make the ac adapter and battery only covered for 6 months so a year is actually pretty good going.

 

Yes, I agree... a year on the battery and including the AC adapter in the life of the overall system warranty is unusually generous on the part of Dell/Alienware.

Unlike the old nickle cadmium, there is no "memory" issue to contend with. Lithium ion batteries should never be discharged and recharged on purpose as a form of maintenance or "conditioning" as some like to call it. To the contrary, in fact. Each discharge/recharge cycle is a tick mark taken off the battery life. They are rated for a certain number of charging cycles, so leaving the system plugged in with the battery fully charged is the best way to get the most out of them. As a general rule, the less you use it, the longer it will last and a complete depletion of a lithium ion battery can actually be harmful to it.

Some people really burn a lot of calories fretting about this. Just use the system the way you need to and when the sucker wears out, buy a new one. This is no different than buying new tires and shocks for your car when they wear out. Avoiding driving the car to minimize tire wear, or driving out of the way to avoid traveling bumpy roads to prevent the shocks from wearing out is just too silly.

 

Yep, though my beast does not last long anyway lol so not much point with me worrying over it.

 

How much would a new battery cost for AW18 btw?

 

I haven't priced one. It should (hopefully) be substantially less expensive than the price of a battery for the M18xR1/R2 because it has fewer cells, no exterior cover, no LED indicator with gauge button, etc. You can find them for around $100 for the M18xR1/R2, so I would hope somewhere between $50-75 for the 18. It should be far cheaper to produce because it's just a bare-bones battery pack.

 

Damn straight.

Also, just because you have not been personally informed that the warranty is only 1 year on batteries doesn't make it not so. How about taking some responsibility for YOURSELF and check before purchase. It's clear as day on the website. If you weren't happy with the terms, you didn't have to purchase. Sense of entitlement in the OP is overwhelming.

 

Hmm, I loaded HWMonitor and maybe luckily (?), I don't even see a Wear % in the program. The line isn't even there...

For the Capacities, I see:
Designed Capacity 87320 mWh
Full Charge Capacity: 87320 mWh
Current Capacity: 87320 mWh

Do I have to unplug it to test it out? I don't think I've actually used my machine with the battery except briefly during a power outage (5-10 minutes).

 

is there a way to check the health status for the power brick? how much wear and tear has been done?

 

I've used Battery Bar for a long time.
It learns how much battery life you will have according to current use and it will also show wear level %.
I actually liked it enough that I bought a 5-pack of licenses, altough it works just well enough as free version.

 

$75 is not too bad really. Especially not when you dished out like $2500-$4000 for the system

 

for power adapter no way to check?

 

To check what? Price? Check ebay as the 330w brick has been out for some time.

 

Check how much wear and tear there is in the PSU.

 

Open it and physically measure all the components with a multimeter and remove and test these components which can't be done with that I suppose is the only way to be totally sure

you could maybe put a dummy load on it and monitor efficiency of output vs input at different load levels.

 

This all sounds like a lot of stressing over how much wear is on battery. There's nothing you can do to change it. If you are growing tomatoes you don't dig up the plant once a week to see how the roots are doing, or at least I would hope not.

Just use the system like you normally would. Enjoy it, and when the battery is worn out you buy a new one.

 

Nonono the PSU not the battery. Riddhy916 was concerned about the health of the PSU after reading this thread.

Dummy load sounds like the most efficient solution if one was really concerned about the PSU.

 

Sorry, I misunderstood. Yeah, I see that now. I just didn't read back far enough.

But, I'd say almost the same thing as the battery. It either works correctly or it doesn't, with nothing in between. If it charges the battery properly, doesn't shut down under load and provides the power the system needs to function correctly, there is probably no reason to be concerned about testing it. If you are trying to resolve a problem and want to test it and rule out the AC adapter, then I would agree with Meaker's comments.

The way these 330W AC adapters are sealed up they are a real bugger to take apart. It's easy to get the black cover off, but almost everything under the black cover is buried under 2 or 3 layers of aluminum sheets that are glued together and more glue sprayed in around capacitors, coils and heat sinks. You would more or less destroy it trying to access all of the internals. You can access the terminals for soldering where the AC line comes in and the DC line goes out with the ID cable, but other than that it's a one-shot throw-away product.

I dismantled one that died a while back and now I wish I had taken photos of the inside of it to share with others. It's clear that they went out of their way to make them unrealistic to try to repair. The white glue stuff they spray all over inside of them looks kind of like shaving cream or whipped topping from a spray can, but feels almost like a dense rubber. It's not flexible and does not release what it is applied to without a lot of force. I don't think they used to be made this way. The photos I had seen of the 240W AC adapter for the M17xR2/R3/R4 was not like this on the inside.

 

wow this spun out of control lol.. I was just voicing my opinion on the whole I didnt know that they were not covered..

But for any one else.. I know a place to get batteries and 330w chargers dirt cheap..

 

LOL at that analogy.

+1 on that second comment.

 

PM me details about it, Im in a need of a few , thnx

 

I will.. let me dig the info back up. but if i recall i paid 30 bucks for my battery and 30 for the 330w psu

 

Yeah dummy load testing would be the most efficient way but it's all a bit much to go through.

 

WELL CRAP i HAVE TO GO THRU MY RECEIPTS TO FIND THE INFO.. CANT FIND THE EMAILS.. BUT IM SURE SOME ONE ELSE HERE KNOWS WHERE I GOT EM FROM IVE TOLD SEVERAL PEOPLE.

 

LOL, I was going to PM you to ask where you got them for so cheap. I wouldn't mind having a spare battery.

 

i got a place lol just have to remember where.. lol sorry guys..

 

Laptop part - World No.1 stockist and Dell Laptop Parts | Dell Parts | Dell Laptop Repair | Dell Repair thats where i got em from.

 

well 2 weeks and still no resolution.